


We've All Been There

by We_Band_of_Buggered



Category: Marvel (Movies)
Genre: AU, Adopted Loki, Confessions, Fluff and Angst, FrostIron - Freeform, Home truths, Human Loki, Hurt/Comfort, Loki Feels, M/M, Teenagers, Tony Stark Cuddles, family dysfunction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 00:44:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/We_Band_of_Buggered/pseuds/We_Band_of_Buggered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Until today, Loki Odinson's biggest problems were high school bullies and a life lived in his brother's shadow. Today, however, a mysterious letter from a man he's never heard of brings him a bombshell that quickly starts to turn his world upside down. Hurt and overwhelmed by the revelations, Loki wants to be with Tony-his boyfriend- and makes a late night journey to get to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We've All Been There

**Author's Note:**

> Tony is nineteen and Loki seventeen, and when other projects are finished I may branch this off into a larger project :). 
> 
> I apologise for any spelling/grammar mistakes you find.

On the sleepy outskirts of a town infamous for crime, a teenager is running. Heart thundering in his chest, he runs until his feet hurt, until his lungs burn, and until he's certain no one is following him. He stumbles to a stop in the town's centre, reaching out with both hands to lean his weight upon the stability of a bus shelter. Ragged breaths are torn from his lungs in uneven spurts, and with tears stinging his eyes he focusses his energies on not throwing up. He manages only until he feels too weary, and the need to do so rises quickly with the bile in his stomach. Any onlooker would think him drunk, would blame his age and the fact that it's Friday, and they wouldn't know the truth. Their world would keep turning where his is collapsing in on him. 

It's barely shy of midnight and he knows where he wants- needs – to go. He doesn't feel his age anymore. He feels impossibly older.

 

_“Is this true?” he had demanded, marching into his father's study and slapping the handwritten letter onto the table the man was sat before. He had been clutching a newspaper, turning a large page clumsily, and as his son wavered before him- restless, impatient- the man had quirked an eyebrow at the boy._

_“What is it, Loki?” he had asked, and Loki had wanted to scream at him. He barely managed not to. It felt as though it took every ounce of him to keep his voice calm._

_“Read the letter,” he had responded, eyes firm on his father, delicate voice faltering as he watched the man before him frown in confusion and fold the newspaper away._

_“As you wish,” Odin cleared his throat, had picked the letter up with his large hands in place of the newspaper._

 

He isn't used to seeing this part of town so empty. Usually it's bustling, thriving, bursting at its seams with floods of day time shoppers, noisy children, workers and school kids depending on the time of day. And the roads are always busy. He can't usually hear himself think on these streets. But without the traffic, without others, all he can hear tonight is his pounding heartbeat and his own laboured breathing. These things alone seem desperately loud, and it makes him grateful for the lack of anything else. He's certain he'd find the invasive drones of people and traffic too much to manage tonight, in these overwrought moments, as if his head would simply implode from having to contend with too much. 

The taxi rank is situated in a narrow street, whose street lights flicker intermittently, and Loki locks his green eyes onto its neon sign- “24h Taxi Service”- and ignores the sharp sound of breaking glass somewhere nearby. A bitter gust of wind kicks up as he crosses the road, pulling petulantly at his hoodie and sending his black locks into disarray. It falls into his red rimmed eyes and he lets it stay there until he's through the heavy door and facing a man at a desk, drumming two pencils on the spine of a book. Something in the man's eyes brightens at the prospect of a customer, and Loki tries fiercely to maintain his composure as he pulls crumpled cash from the pocket of his dark jeans with one hand, pushes hair back with the other. 

“I'm going far,” he tells the man before him, “I have more than enough money if you'll take me.”

 

_“Where did you get this?” Odin's eyes had hardened on his youngest._

_“Is it true?” Loki's voice had been softer than Odin's. His eyes were too._

_“When did it arrive?” Odin evaded, standing now, still separated from Loki by the dark oak desk between them._

_“Tell me!” Loki had shouted, slamming both hands down hard onto the desk. Flames of anger curled within him, spreading through him now, and just as Odin had opened his mouth to, presumably, issue Loki a warning as stern as the animosity in his eyes, the study door swung open and Frigga hurried inside._

_“What's this commotion?” she had asked, hand absently going to rest on Loki's back as she reached him. He jerked away within a second and yelled again at his father._

_“Tell me, Odin!”_

_“Odin?” Frigga's expression, fixed on Loki, had fallen into a delicate, sad confusion before expectant eyes turned to her husband._

_“It's him,” Odin had told Frigga, and Loki felt his sweltering anger surge in him at Odin's vagueness. It whirled like a fierce and unforgiving gale until it was past the point of simply being anger. It became rage. “He's found us.”_

_“No...” Frigga's hand jumped to cover her mouth, the other to her stomach as though Odin's words- his implications- made her physically sick. “Please, no...”_

_“He knows where we live. He's sent Loki a letter.” Odin moved around the desk then, dropping the letter onto it and wrapping strong arms around his wife. Her hands covered her face as she leaned into his embrace, and Loki had known she would be trying hard not to cry._

_“S-so it's true then,” his voice had been even aside from its stammer, and when neither Odin nor Frigga responded, he had yelled just one more time. “One of you tell me if it's true!”_

_Frigga's hands had fallen then, and a grave expression had turned away from Odin's chest and was fixed on Loki's thin, pale face. She had slipped from her husband's arms and was frowning gently as she moved slowly, carefully towards Loki, as though he were a bomb ready to detonate were she to move to him too suddenly._

_“I'm so sorry, Loki,” she had told him softly, and he felt as though he was weakening with her every word. He couldn't keep his fists clenched anymore, and it wasn't easy to breathe anymore, “It's true.”_

 

He sits in the car's back seat and the driver only attempts small talk twice, only asks him once if he's okay, and when Loki responds only by frowning, or by sinking lower in his seat, the rest of the journey passes without interaction. Instead, the car is filled with sounds of a quiet radio conversation, the driver's occasional chuckles at the programme's sentiments, and Loki can hear his own breathing but not his heartbeat anymore. He imagines it isn't there at all as he distantly eyes the scenery that flicks past his window. It's dark enough that most of the time he can only see his own reflection. He flinches each time it jumps into view, and eventually he resorts to shrugging deeper into his green, oversized hoodie, pulling its hood up and closing his eyes. 

Four words circulate his mind. No matter how hard he tries to push them away, how far he leads his mind from them, it's the same four words that come springing back to him. They spread through him like slow poision. 

I should have known.

I should have known.

For years there was something pressing at him; something whose origin he'd never been able to pinpoint. It was something that had taken him aside in countless family gatherings- birthday celebrations, Christmases, holidays- and it whispered to him when nobody else was looking at him. It would tell him that he didn't belong. It would be there constantly, nagging at him, telling him that there was something hidden behind Frigga's fond smiles, something more to Odin's preference for Thor. He's always merely assumed he was too different than his family- or the men in it, at least. 

He isn't conservative and stern like Odin, or strong and unconditionally loving as Thor is. It always felt as though there was something darker to him somehow. At school, Thor had always been sporty and popular. He hadn't particularly excelled academically, but those who didn't take an instant liking to his kind and gregarious nature respected or feared him enough for his size and his strength that he had sailed easily through high school. Loki wasn't like that. Loki was slender, more slight, quieter, more softly spoken and he held himself more elegantly. He'd endure some new sly remark most days about one thing or another. They'd call him queer, a freak, a suicidal emo. He'd been, for the most part, safe from physical assault while Thor reigned in the year two above Loki's, but that had stopped when Thor left, transitioned into the real world. Since then, Loki had been shoved in corridors, “accidentally” tripped in the lunch hall, had walked home with stones being pelted at his back by groups of laughing peers. And all of this has been telling him, for the last two years, that he has yet to find a place where he belongs. He wasn't like the others in his family. He could never smile as easily as they could. He rarely laughs.

He should have known.

He should have fucking known!

 

_“The man who wrote to you,” Frigga had began, Loki's hands raised as a warning for her not to come closer to the wall he was backed against, “He wasn't a good man when we knew him, Loki. He...he was a colleague of your fathers, and he was manipulative and corrupt. He was evil, Loki.”_

_“Aren't all politicians?” Loki had practically croaked, defences weakened, chest heaving. His eyes had flicked to Odin with his weighted remark, and fury had flashed through the man's eyes. Odin had served the world of politics for years before Thor's birth, and had quit during the years in which Thor was a toddler and Loki merely a baby._

_“Loki,” Frigga spoke softly before Odin was able to add anything, “Laufey's family were wealthy, were influential and powerful for their own good. He wanted so badly to govern that they all went out of their way to make sure he could. They cut corners for him, they bought, they bribed, they betrayed...They...He murdered a rival, Loki. His father and brothers helped him cover it up.”_

_“How do you know that?” Loki's delicate voice had wavered._

_“He believed he could trust me,” Odin spoke then, “I had him convinced I was on his side completely, and over time he confided in me.”_

_“Where...” Loki started, and Odin raised an expectant brow at the teenager's hesitation, “Where do I come into all of that?” Odin had sighed, and taken a long pause before he spoke again._

_“He got a young woman pregnant,” he explained, “She was a street worker. She left the baby on his doorstep in the middle of a blizzard. You were so tiny. You'd have frozen to death if I hadn't found you.”_

_“He said you stole me,” Loki wrapped his arms around himself, eyes burning into Odin, “I-in the letter.”_

_“I did,” Odin had replied simply, and Loki felt as though something in him was going to shatter. “I brought you to him, and agreed to tell no one of you while he tried to find your mo...the woman.”_

_“And then?” Loki demanded, his voice weaker than he'd wanted, too desperate and shaky._

_“They found the body of the man he murdered,” Odin stated, simple and almost casual, as though Loki's head hadn't been spinning from this, wasn't trying to pull him into the sudden tsunami of information and drown him in it. “They arrested him. No one knew of you yet. If they found you...I knew there was a chance you'd live a damaging life, that I could promise you something better than that. That we all could.”_

_“You don't think I'm damaged?” Loki had raised his eyebrows then, and in response, Odin scoffed._

 

The taxi driver pulls onto the correct street an hour after its journey commenced. The street is wide and surprisingly suburban, Loki always thinks, for somewhere so close to the centre of a city that relies on contributions of university students to survive. The road is lined, on both sides, with a row of bungalows that, aside from the colours of their doors, appear painfully identical. Loki thinks he would find them boring if it weren't for the reason he was so desperate to come here. The house he's eyeing feels as though it might be the only place that he knows can give him the solace he needs so desperately right now.

He points the driver to the correct house and the car rolls to a stop before it. A quick glance at it sends something warm through Loki, but tells him that no lights are on. If it were under any other circumstances, he might feel prickles of guilt at the prospect of waking the home owner. But not tonight. 

“I don't usually take people this far,” the driver tells him, “Especially at 1 A.M in the morning.”

“As opposed to 1 A.M at night?” Loki's voice is flat, colourless almost, as if he's lost all interest in his own words. He rolls his eyes when the driver frowns in confusion. “It's appreciated,” Loki adds, and then he's producing the crumpled notes from his pocket and pushing them into the driver's open hand. He climbs out of the car after that, and the warmth drains from him until he's shivering. He pushes the door shut and squints through heavy, ghostly fog at the bungalow in question.

The taxi pulls away from the curb, and Loki shrugs deeper into his hoodie to salvage any warmth it might have left to offer him. The air is bitter and cold, paper thin and sharp enough that it hurts to inhale through his nose. The taxi disappears into the fog, out of sight, and Loki feels as though he's the only person left on earth. The streets he's seen tonight are, for the most, empty, abandoned, thick with early winter's fog and he feels as though he's trapped in a horror movie. That thought prompts him to quicken his pace to the bungalow's vibrant red front door. He staggers along the garden path as though in a daze, the path flaked by withered weeds and browning grass, and when he reaches the door he knocks hard on it, continously and relentlessly until light sparks into a window and he hears footsteps. He hears a familiar voice dragged into an annoyed groan, and none of this can happen fast enough for Loki's liking. 

Tony Stark pulls open the door wearing boxers and an oversized hoodie, his hair dishevelled and his dark eyes underlined with tired black bags. His eyes widen at the sight of Loki, and the name tumbles from his lips in a voice made higher by surprise than his usual pitch. 

And the smile Loki greets him with is humourless and doesn't reach his eyes. 

“Hello,” Loki says, gives a humourless chuckle and tries, despite the tears welling in his eyes, to make light of the situation, “Fancied a jaunt.” His smile falls and his teeth begin to chatter. Tony's shivering in the doorway, and he's frowning with concern. 

“Get in here,” he says, that concern mixing with fatigue in his expression as he steps aside and lets the younger boy slip past him and into the house. Tony closes the door behind them both, and it's always warm in Tony's house. He's a nineteen year old student who lives alone, but with a billionaire father and a mind as inventive and resourceful as Tony's, he's never been short for money and Loki knows that, even without his father's financial input, Tony never will be. Tony's hands find Loki's waist and they stand like that by the door for a long moment, Loki's back against Tony's chest. “Are you crazy? What's wrong?” he whispers the second part, his breath warm and the scent of him a familiar comfort. He smells like his cologne and the warmth of a heated home. 

“I needed to see you,” Loki barely keeps his voice from faltering. 

“I see that, “ Tony says, fingers a little tighter at Loki's hips, a delicate kiss planted and lost somewhere in his shock of black hair. A tear falls from Loki's closed eyes and rolls down his pale cheek, and Tony's arms wrap themselves around his slender figure and Loki hears the quick, short gasp of the older teenager stifling a yawn, trying to ward off fatigue. He brings his hands to Tony's wrists and takes a shaky breath, as if bracing himself against him. 

“Are you okay?” Tony asks.

“I'm not their son,” Loki replies simply.

 

_“You lied to me,” Loki's voice had shaken._

_“I just wanted to protect you from the truth,” Odin defended himself, defended the pair of them and Thor too if he knew already, though Loki had doubted they'd have told him._

_“Why?” Loki demanded, eyes welling with tears that threatened to blur his vision, “Because I-I-I come from a family of monsters? B-because that's what I've got in my blood?”_

_“You're our son,” Frigga had interjected before Odin could reply, and Loki had looked at her and found neither her gentle, pained expression nor her warm and delicate voice a comfort then. “Ours. Just as much as Thor is. Tell him, Odin.”_

_Loki had looked at Odin then. Frigga had done the same, staring at her husband with eyes that were sterner and colder than Loki's. Loki's were stinging with the tears. Odin frowned at Frigga; a gesture that deepened, worsened on his expression when it fell to Loki instead. The teenager's chest was tight, was heaving, as though something inside him had been gripping his lungs and preventing them from letting him breathe evenly. His fists were clenched weakly at his sides._

_Odin had simply turned away then, and started for the door._

_“Father!” Loki had yelled, and his voice had broken on the word- on the lie- like water on rocks, “Look at me!”_

_Odin didn't look at him, hadn't even broken his stride at the pain in Loki's voice that had, by that point, been enough to mar Frigga's cheeks with tears of her own. He strode towards the door and Loki had wanted to say something else, to shout something blood curdling, but the words were tangled somewhere in his throat before they could pass his lips, and all he could do instead was gasp around their remains with breaths ragged and hollow._

_The tears on his cheeks had matched Frigga's by the time Odin had disappeared and slammed the study door shut behind him. Loki felt as though he could barely stand, his legs as unreliable as his lungs, like these lies he'd been told of, this utter betrayal of his trust by the people who raised him was affecting him physically as well as emotionally. Frigga had tried to touch his arm, but Loki had jerked away from her and ran._

 

Tony's duvet is on the floor. He leads Loki into his bedroom after their long conversation in the hall, and tells him that he kicked the duvet off in exhausted frustration at the sound of the door. Loki nods but doesn't respond. He feels numb. He's explained it all to Tony and he's drained, too tired to feel anything and he's glad for it. Tony doesn't look as tired anymore. The news was sobering, like a sudden gust of freezing winter air to bare and vulnerable skin, and he's moving so slowly it's as if he's in a trance. Loki leans against the radiator with his arms folded across his chest, watching the older teen process Loki's bombshell quietly.

“They shouldn't have kept it from you,” Tony says when the duvet is bundled back onto the bed, “Honestly, parents act so high and mighty, but they make worse fucking mistakes than their kids.”

“I...” Loki starts, wheels of his mind slowed by the exhaustion creeping into them, “I don't know why I expected more. I've never belonged. I always thought I was...wrong somehow.”

“I have alcohol,” Tony suggests, almost jovial about it, his eyebrows raised and his dark eyes lodged expectantly on Loki. Loki manages the beginnings of a smile. Except it's not him. It's Tony. Tony manages to bring quirks to the corners of his lips, to soften his eyes and lift invisible weight from his shoulders until Loki almost thinks it possible to float. Or at least to stay afloat. 

He wonders if he's falling for Tony. It's only been a month. 

“That's probably not wise,” he tells Tony, “I think I need to rest.”

“Suit yourself, Green,” Tony shrugs, pulls back some of the duvet and settles a gentle expression on Loki, who's still smiling at the use of Tony's nickname for him. “Come and rest here.” He gestures towards the bed and Loki's lips part. He's standing now, not leaning, and all he can do is look from Tony, to the bed, and back again, to those eyes that shine despite their darkness and the room's half light. 

“In your bed?” he asks, heart pounding a little harder at the thought. A cocktail of juxtaposition begins to whirl through him now; he's drawn but he's nervous; he needs to feel Tony's skin against his own but he's never felt it before- never felt anyone's. It's only been a month but Tony's side is the only place he feels unconditionally loved, astoundingly valued, luckier than anyone he knew to have someone like Tony look the way he does at someone like Loki. 

“If you want,” Tony replies, and there's distance between them that Loki starts to close with small, tentative steps. 

“I do,” he tells him, “But I've...never...”

“I know, Loki,” Tony tells him, voice soft despite the twinge of surprise in his expression that Loki would mention this, “I wasn't suggesting sex.”

Loki nods, assured, and he crossed the room and only stops when he's as close to Tony as he can be, their chests pressed together. Tony holds him gently close, and kisses him. This is neither new nor frightening. It's familiar, safe and perfect. It's been a month. 

The kiss they share is gentle, Loki's hands on Tony's hips and Tony's lost somewhere in the younger teen's hair. It becomes desperate gradually, the soft brush of lips against lips transcending into a tighter grip on each other, Tony gently pulling at Loki's hair until a broken moan of approval is pulled from Loki's thin lips. It's so easy for him to lose himself in Tony; in their lively conversations, in the older teen's gentle touches and in the way they hold each other. He holds Tony against him and lets himself wander in the other boy, lets his mind focus on the taste of Tony's tongue, the gentle scrape of his teeth against his own, to feel Tony's quickened breath and know all the while that the furthest Tony would let his hands wander is Loki's waist, because they've spoken about going further but they can't see each other often and Loki isn't ready yet. They'll fall into bed together with no expectations and no pressure, just the warmth of words, embraces and the other's company. 

They pull back from each other now and Loki instantly misses the closeness. Tony reaches to the hem of his own hoodie and pulls it off in one swift movement. He lets it drop to the floor and Loki's eyes wander across the older teen's chest. Tony isn't as pale as Loki, isn't as skinny, has more muscles and broader shoulders, and when he looks up from his boyfriend's chest he realises that Tony is staring at him in turn. Loki wears layers and Tony has never glimpsed the skin beneath. They live so far apart and it's only been a month.

He stares intently, as though he's trying to see through the layers of clothing hanging from Loki's slender frame. His hand reaches to the hoodie's zip just inches below Loki's chin. He holds the metal of it between his thumb and forefinger and his eyes flick to Loki's. It's a wordless search for confirmation that this is okay- that Loki is okay- and the younger teen nods his approval.

The zip slides down as Tony pulls it, separating the two sides of it at the bottom. Loki's eyes are fixed on Tony- on his face, on how intently he's staring at Loki's chest as he pushes the shoulders of the hoodie back and lets it land at their feet. He moves to the hem of Loki's black t-shirt then, lifts it over the younger teen's head more slowly than he'd pulled clothes from himself, and adds it to the pile of their discarded clothes on the floor. Tony has never seen Loki shirtless. Loki's never let him before; never had the opportunity at the same time as feeling brave enough to do so. Tony's eyes travel Loki's bare torso and, soon enough, they land on the reasons why. 

The skin of Loki's left upper arm stands out from the rest. It's not as smooth, isn't the same shade of pale white as the rest of him. Scars lined the forearm, scores of pale pink lines scattered across it. Some of them are old, faded as much as they're ever likely to, but others are darker and more harsh against the paleness of his skin. 

Nobody's ever seen them before. Nobody's ever learned of them until now, and when Tony's eyes linger upon the marks just a second too long, a heavy heat rises to Loki's cheeks. He pulls away carefully and turns his body from Tony. He suddenly wants to be clothed again, wants Tony not to have noticed and stared, wants the scars not to be there. 

“Hey,” Tony grabs his wrist gently, and when Loki's eyes snap to his boyfriend, Tony's eyes aren't on Loki's arm anymore. They're fixed, unblinking on his eyes and they're full of a delicate sincerity he doubts many have seen in Tony's eyes. It's as if there's nothing else in the room, nothing else in the world but Loki's eyes and it takes the younger teen aback. “Don't worry about that. It's okay.”

“There are better coping mechanisms...” Loki says quietly, softly, his eyes slipping from Tony's. Tony brings his forehead to rest gently against Loki's. 

“Don't need to tell me,” he whispers, “Drowning my sorrows isn't the best way to deal with shit either but I do it anyway. People deal with bad stuff differently. We've all been there.”

We've all been there.

That brings another smile to Loki's face- the knowledge he has of Tony's life, coupled with the new knowledge of his own make him feel less alone. Tony and his father have a worse relationship than Loki ever has done with Odin. The man's a strict and neglectful perfectionist, and just as Loki could never measure up to Thor in Odin's eyes, Tony would never measure up to his father in the eyes of the man himself. 

They share another kiss and fall into bed after that, both clad only in boxers. Their bodies pressed together, each warms the other. They lie with their legs tangled together, skin against skin, sharing one pillow with Tony's breath in Loki's hair and his arms around him. It's comfortably warm and the weight that had been dumped on Loki's shoulders earlier can't reach him here. He shuts his eyes and feels himself gradually beginning to drift away from everything- everything but this bed, everything but Tony. 

So, he decides, he'll rest. He'll take comfort in the man he's falling for and offer the same to him. He'll call Odin and Frigga in the morning and tell them he's safe, that he's taking the weekend, and then both he and Tony will spend it with each other, pretending they have no troubles, that life is simple, uncomplicated and they're never anything but constantly happy. There have both, Loki decides, earned that right.

They can escape for a while, steal a weekend from the world and deal with the rest on Monday.

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed writing this and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Please feel free to comment and tell me what you think :)


End file.
